Category: visual

As celebrations of Salvador Dali’s 100th birthday gear up in Spain, it’s interesting to note how he and his work are now perceived. “The truth is that the savage visions of Dali, once considered genuinely disturbing, have been comfortably absorbed into the cultural mainstream. This has meant, inevitably, a partial sanitisation of the artist’s more excessive expressions.”

Dave Barry willingly acknowledges he’s a “clueless idiot” when it comes to art. But he doesn’t understand some of the art he saw recently at Art Basel Miami: “Anyway, in the corner of one container there was a ratty old collapsed armchair – worn, dirty, leaking stuffing, possibly housing active vermin colonies. I asked the gallery person if the chair was art, and she said yes, it was a work titled “Chair.” I asked her what role the artist had played in creating “Chair.” She said: “He found it.” She noted that “Chair” had been professionally crated and shipped to the art show.”

Should a judge allow the Barnes Collection to move from its current suburban home to Philadelphia? There’s been little evidence to convince critic Edward Sozanski that the move would work out for the best. The judge “can’t let the Barnes perish, and he must also contend with two situations, over which he hasn’t any control, that militate against staying put.”

James Russell is trying very hard not to hate the design for the WTC memorial – even after the revisions. “What it takes to make a commemorative work of design meaningful can be quite subtle—and quite hard to evaluate before it’s built, even in slick computer-produced images. But aspects of the revised Ground Zero memorial raise questions, lots of them.”

A port city dating back to the 2nd Century has been found under Naples. “Extending into the heart of present-day Naples, the second-century port was found 13 meters (43 feet) beneath one of the city’s main squares, not far from the 13th-century Maschio Angioino fortress. Evidence for the ancient Mediterranean port included a 10-meter (33-foot) ship, wooden pieces belonging to piers, and various items.”

The National Museum of the American Indian will open on the National Mall in Washington DC in nine months. The Smithsonian’s newest outpost will have “an unmatched collection of artifacts and displays designed to set the record straight on the history and contributions of native peoples. That will culminate a 20-year push to establish a museum on the Mall that would enshrine 10,000 years of Native American life and culture as a central chapter of history.”

Britain’s museums are struggling financially since they dropped admission charges last year. So ho can the government help? One idea is to “introduce tax breaks for individuals and companies who donate to national and regional museums, which could cost the Treasury £30m a year in lost tax revenue.”

“Pablo Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, painted in 1905 when he was 24, could become the world’s most expensive painting at an auction at Sotherby’s in New York. The painting is estimated to sell for $70m (£38m) at the auction in May, but could easily outstrip Van Gogh’s portrait of Dr Gachet, which had a before-commission price tag of $75m in 1990.”

A revised design for the World Trade Center Memorial is unveiled. “They have proposed an underground space called the Memorial Center, perhaps two acres or more in extent, according to those who have seen the design. It is there that the twisted, resilient, evocative vestiges of the attack, fire trucks, steel columns, maybe even Fritz Koenig’s sculpture `Sphere for Plaza Fountain’ can finally return.”

The revised 9/11 memorial is promising, says Benjamin Forgey, because it demonstrates a clear willingness on the part of the designers to be responsive to public concerns, and on the part of certain New York politicians to create a monument to human tragedy without making the experience of visiting it too bleak to attract visitors. But the design is still a major departure from Freedom Tower architect Daniel Libeskind’s vision for the site, and whether the actual memorial fulfills the promise of its redesign is still an open question.